The Crossing

16

Bosch read the notes he had taken during the phone call and tried to put things in context. Two days after Da’Quan Foster was arrested for killing Lexi Parks in West Hollywood, the man he would claim was his alibi for the time of that murder was himself murdered in Hollywood, possibly by a serial killer. There was no evidence or even suggestion that this was anything other than a grim coincidence — Allen’s profession put him at a higher probability of becoming a murder victim than most. But Bosch only accepted coincidence grudgingly.

From victim profile to crime scene to method of murder the two killings were different, at least as far as Bosch had seen from photos of one and a verbal description of the other. Still, the possible connection bore further scrutiny. Bosch considered what Lucia had told him about the investigation of the Allen case. The motel room had been processed by a forensic team. Bosch wondered, What were the chances that hair and fiber left behind six weeks earlier by Foster could have been collected during the sweep of the room. What about DNA? What about fingerprints?

Regardless, he knew that the six-week time difference between Allen’s death and the night of Lexi Parks’s murder would render any such evidence inconclusive in terms of the law. It would not be viable in establishing an alibi, and no judge would allow it into court. There would be no way of establishing when the evidence was put in the motel room. But Bosch was not a court of law. He worked on instinct. If Da’Quan Foster had left any microscopic trace in Allen’s motel room, it would go a long way toward assuring Bosch that Foster’s account of his whereabouts on the night Lexi Parks died was true.

Bosch got up from the table and went out to the back deck. As he slid open the glass door he was greeted by the ever-present sound of the freeway at the bottom of the Cahuenga Pass. He put his elbows on the wood railing and looked down, not really seeing the spectacle of the crowded freeway below. He was thinking. Lucia had said that Mike Stotter and Ali Karim had had the case profiled. He wanted to read the profile to compare it with the Parks profile and see if there were any psychological links between the two killings. The problem was he couldn’t go to Stotter and Karim without revealing what he was up to and he knew that he could not go back to Soto. Asking her to do anything further might put her in jeopardy.

In his mind Bosch pulled up a visual of the massive RHD squad room and moved across the rows of cubicles, remembering who sat where, trying to conjure a face of somebody he could reach out to and ask for help. Suddenly he realized he was looking in the wrong place. He went back inside to the table where he had left his phone.

He scrolled through his contacts list until he came to the name he wanted and made the call. He was expecting to have to leave a message and was surprised when the call was picked up live.

“Dr. Hinojos.”

“Doctor, it’s Harry Bosch.”

“Well, Harry... how are you? How is retirement?”

“Uh, retirement’s not so bad. How are you doing?”

“I’m okay, but you know I’m mad at you.”

“Me? What for?”

“I didn’t get an invite to your retirement dinner. I thought for sure you would have—”

“Doc, nobody got invited to my retirement dinner. I didn’t have one.”

“What? Why not? Every detective has a retirement party.”

“And at every one of them people stand around telling stories everybody else has heard a hundred times before. I didn’t want that. Besides I went out under a cloud, you know? I didn’t want to put anybody on the spot by asking them to come to my retirement party.”

“I’m sure they all would have come. How is your daughter?”

“She’s good. She’s actually the reason I’m calling.”

Bosch and Hinojos had known each other twenty years. She was head of the Behavioral Science Unit now, but when they had first met, she was a department shrink charged with determining whether Bosch was fit to return to duty after a suspension incurred when he had pushed a supervisor through a glass window for interfering with Bosch’s interview of a murder suspect. It wouldn’t be the last time she would have to make the return-to-duty call with him.

Their relationship continued in a new way five years earlier when Maddie had come to Los Angeles to live with Bosch and to try to get over the grief that engulfed her after her mother’s murder. Hinojos had volunteered her services free of charge and it was those therapy sessions that helped Maddie to eventually get through the trauma. Bosch was indebted to Hinojos on many levels and now was going to try to use her in an underhanded way. It made him feel guilty before he had even started.

“Does she want to come in and talk?” Hinojos asked. “I’ll open my calendar.”

“Actually, no, she doesn’t really need to talk,” Bosch said. “She’s going to college in September down at Chapman in Orange.”

“Good school. What’s she going to study?”

“Psychology. She wants to be like you, a profiler.”

“Well, with me that’s only been part of the job, but I have to say I’m flattered.”

Bosch hadn’t lied so far. And what he was about to ask he could defend to a certain degree. He would do what he said — if Hinojos came through.

“So I was thinking,” he said, “most of what she knows about it is from watching TV and reading books but she’s never actually seen a profile of a real case, you know? That’s why I’m calling. I was wondering if you had a few profiles of recent cases that you could give me to show her. You know, you could redact the names or whatever you needed to do. I’d just like her to actually see one of these things so she has a better idea of what the job’s about.”

Hinojos took a few moments to answer.

“Well,” she finally said, “I think I might be able to pull something together. But are you sure she’s ready for this, Harry? As you know, these profiles are very detailed and they don’t shy away from describing the most heinous aspects of these cases. The sexual assaults in particular. It’s not gratuitously graphic but the details are important.”

“I know that,” he said. “I’m just concerned that she may not really understand what it’s about. The kid’s binge-watched sixteen seasons of SVU and other stuff like that and now wants to be a profiler. I want her to get a good read on it and not think it’s like a TV show.”

Bosch waited.

“Let me see what I can put together,” Hinojos said. “Give me till the end of the day. It’s actually been kind of slow in the profiling department but we had a few cases so far this year. And I could look in the archives, too. Maybe it would be better to pull them out of closed cases.”

Bosch didn’t want that.

“Whatever way you want to do it, Doctor,” he said. “But I think the more recent, the better. You know, it would show how it’s done and put together right now. But I’ll leave it to you and she’ll be very thankful for whatever I can get for her. I’ll make sure she calls you to tell you what she thinks.”

“I hope it makes her more certain of her choice,” Hinojos said.

“Should I call you later?”

“That will be fine, Harry.”